First Meeting of the Competition Authorities of the Sofia Competition Forum

12 November 2012Hilton HotelSofia, Bulgaria, Bulgaria

Key Issues

The Sofia Competition Forum is a regional initiative which strives to foster cooperation and the development of regional ties in the Balkan region, thus ensuring a uniform appli­cation of competition rules. The initiative aims to assist countries in the region in adopting and enforcing competi­tion law and to maximize the benefits for these countries of well-functioning markets.

The Sofia Competition Forum is designed to provide capacity building assistance and policy advice through seminars and workshops on competition law and policy. Through maintaining a web-based platform for publication of information, materials and presentations, as well as for conducting webinars, the Sofia Competition Forum expects to further facilitate the cooperation between competition authorities in the region and foster the development of regional relations among them.

Dialogue is mainly focused on issues related to:

Improving the competition legislation, which fits the spe­cific legal and economic structure and can best address the development needs of the young competition authorities in the region.

Institutional building of the competition authorities.

Capacity building for efficient enforcement of competition law and policy.

Negotiation process for EU membership.

Building on existing international fora, such as UNCTAD, OECD and the ICN, the Sofia Competition Forum aims to provide the competition authorities of the region a platform to exchange infor­mation and expertise in the field of competition policy. In view of the fact that most countries in the region face similar challenges in their transition to market economy, the problems in competi­tion law enforcement are also of the same kind. The creation and improvement of competition legislation, capacity building, applica­tion of the best practices in law enforcement, and finding common solutions to the specific competition concerns in the region are key objectives of the Sofia Competition Forum.